The Steel Rose
by Sindai
Summary: It has been twenty-five years since Holy shattered Meteor on the night of what known as the Draining. In those twenty-five years, a lot has changed.
1. Prologue and Chapters 1-6

FFVII: The Steel Rose (V2

Author's note: This is my first fic posted to fanfiction.net, and one of the first fics I've ever written. I've started a few others, but for some reason, I never get very far. Chalk it up to a teenager's short attention span, I guess. I hope you guys like it, and please take the time to reply with any comments you may have, since, after all, you've already wasted quite a few minutes reading it, haven't you? ;)

This fic is what's known as a "mass insertion" fic. 90% of the characters borrow their names (if nothing else) from some of the great people on the fanfiction forum of ffonline.com, which happens to be one of, if not _the _best place for fanfiction and original writings I've ever seen. I highly recommend it to anyone out there interested in having a warm, close-knit environment to post their stories to.

So, that stuff out of the way, I now present to you a _very_ different take on the future of the FFVII world…

****

FFVII: The Steel Rose  
By: Sindai   
  
* * *   
  
**Prologue: _"Once we're done with Kalm…"_**

Outside of Cosmo Canyon, in the midst of a vast encampment upon the great dry plains, two beings of power, one male, one female, consulted.   
  
Both were equal in stature. Both were equal in rank. The similarities ended there.   
  
The man wore long, unadorned robes of brown over his thin frame. There seemed nothing too him but gristle and bone, a characteristic which extended to his face. It was a face of the sort that would be compared to a dried, wrinkled piece of fruit, had anyone dared. At his belt he wore a pair of sheathes, sized to fit long, matched blades shaped like three-foot snake fangs.   
  
The woman was more attractive by far, with long red hair, eyes that burned, and skin that seemed darker than it should be. She too, wore only simple, unadorned clothes, though not robes. She carried no visible weapon. All she had need of for such things was the single piece of fire-orange crystal that burned bright within her forehead like a third eye.   
  
The woman crossed her arms and her eyes seemed to burn brighter for a moment as she spoke, "I still say we should attack immediately."   
  
"And be wiped out by Tacoma's magic?" The man dropped into a battered wooden chair, his tone one of boredom that said rather clearly that this was an argument repeated far too often for his tastes. "The expedition to Kalm should be on its way back by now. What's the harm in waiting another few weeks?"   
  
"You said it yourself, we can't watch _all_ the canyons."   
  
"True, but then we don't have to. As it is they can barely smuggle in enough food to keep from starving. If anything larger starts moving in or out, we'll know about it."   
  
"But if we can capture the huge materia-"   
  
"What? We can't do anything with them. Oh, you could try, but you'd just end up turning everything within a hundred miles into a nice glass-surfaced crater. If the Faceless wants them so badly, I'm just going to let him risk his own armored skin to get them. I like my own hide exactly where it is." The Flayer's eyes glittered at his joke, for while his robes were unornamented, they did have one rather unique characteristic.   
  
They were skin, human skin. 

* * *

  
  
Many, many miles to the east of the siege of Cosmo Canyon, across the Inland Sea and north of the ruins of Midgar, a smaller army - one on the move - camped for the night.   
  
And in this army too, there were beings of power. Perhaps even greater than those ensuring that nothing unforeseen would occur at Cosmo Canyon   
  
In the center of this army, there was a great Engine. Or, to be more precise, a great train engine. Where once thin steel wheels gripped iron rails there were now long rows of flywheels encased in tires and treads. As the army stopped its advance and the sun began to dip below the horizon, the great steam engine lay quiet and a meeting was called atop it.   
  
This meeting was dominated by single figure, a massive, powerful figure. Easily seven feet tall, the commander of the army stood as immovable as a mountain. Head to foot, crudely hammered iron armor covered his massive frame. Not a single physical feature, save sheer bulk, was revealed by the thick metal façade. Not even his eyes.   
  
On his back was slung a great sword, perhaps the _greatest_ sword…the Ultimate Weapon.   
  
Before him stood his two subordinates, men who were somewhat less imposing. At least at first glance.   
  
One of the two shifted impatiently and spoke first. "Well? What'd ya call us here for?" His eyes were the red of running blood.   
  
The other man, dark-eyed and dark-haired with skin that seemed far too pale for one who spent so much time in deserts, said much the same. "Yes, might I enquire what is so urgent that I must be interrupted at my rituals?"   
  
The mountain of muscle and steel in front of them took a long moment to breath in and out before answering. His voice was almost glacial in its steady resonance, like a sound that was geological, not human. "In two days, we reach Kalm."   
  
Both men nodded. This was no news to them, of course.   
  
"And when we do…I am going to take Tifa Lockheart's materia, one way, or another."   
  
Two nods again.   
  
"Is everything ready?"   
  
Despite the indeterminate direction of the question, the man with red eyes stepped forward to answer. Only his eyes were no longer red, but green, and he spoke differently as well. "Everything is ready. Our agent will act as necessary. I have been in close contact with him; there is nothing to fear"   
  
And then the pale man stepped forwards and gave a little bow, spreading his hands dramatically. "I and my children are at your service, as always."   
  
The armored giant favored him with a nod of his own. "You will see to it that no one escapes the city."   
  
"As you wish, my lord."   
  
At this the other man snorted slightly, his eyes gone blue. If the commander noticed, he gave no sign. "You are dismissed." The pale man bowed and the man with changing eyes nodded. Both left the Engine in no small hurry.   
  
Instead of returning to his own tents, however, the man with changing eyes followed the pale man back towards the pale man's quarters, set quite a ways apart from the rest of the army. The pale man noticed, but did not confront his shadower until they were well away from anyone who might overhear.   
  
"Well? What is it you want now?" The pale man spun on the other, voice impatient. "I have preparations to make…"   
  
The other man's eyes were as white as mist. He spoke hollowly, as if dreaming. "I see success for us ahead…the Faceless Man _will_ fall. But something is intruding on my visions…"   
  
The pale man's dark eyes lit with interest, though he said nothing.   
  
"There's something in Kalm…no…away from Kalm…even more important than the materia."   
  
"What? Can't you be any more clear?"   
  
The other man shook his head from side to side like a dog drying himself. When he looked up again, his eyes had gone jester's yellow. "Heh. You think the White is bad when talking to you? You ought to try living with the-" He cut himself off in mid sentence, his eyes gone green. "I know what to do. I can get us something that will guarantee us success. But to do it, I'll need help."   
  
The pale man considered for a moment. Certainly his fellow was untrustworthy…but they would need every edge they could get, and when his eyes were white, he never lied. "Very well. Once we're done with Kalm, I shall leave Shigan and Darkblade with you."   
  
The green eyes shimmered for a moment, as if they were about to change…but they did not. "That will do." And the man of many eyes turned on his heel and left.

****

Chapter 1: _"It doesn't really matter…"_

  
  
  
I looked at the campfire. I looked at the sandy crater in which both it and I sat. I looked at the meteoric streaks of fire that carved the sky in the Stone Rain…. And for what must have been the hundredth time that day, I wondered just who it was that was following us across the open desert, to the east of Kalm.   
  
_They have to be bounty hunters._ The same lines of thought rolled through my mind, a word-for-word copy of the last one hundred times. _Some_ very _good ones at that._ And if my guess at exactly which _very_ good pair of bounty it was was right, we would be in deep, deep chocobo shit sometime…tomorrow, I figured.   
  
But there was no point in my worrying. There was nowhere to hide this far away from the well-traveled merchant's routes, and we were already running as fast as we could.   
  
I sighed and leaned back against the dubious comfort provided by a sandstone pillar at one edge of the crater. It was a pretty old crater, as such things went, maybe even dating back to the year of the Draining. It fit our purposes perfectly, hiding us, our fire, and our supplies from the predators of the wasteland night.   
  
That very same pillar of rock, which I was using as a rather uncomfortable backrest, extended far enough above the lip of the crater to provide an excellent lookout tower. A perch inhabited by the other half of that "us" I've been mentioning.   
  
Right on cue, as always, my sister called down from her lofty perch, "C'mon, Sindai! You gotta see 'em tonight! They're even thicker than usual! It's amazing…like a rain of pure light…thousands of them…"   
  
She referred to the Stone Rain, of course. Even now, a full quarter of a century since Meteor was shattered on the night of the Draining, chunks of the planetoid make a sustained assault upon the Planet. A few of them were large enough to impact the ground, smattering the Planet with uncounted craters like the one in which we'd camped. Most of the shards weren't that large, though, and burned up as they entered the atmosphere instead. Thus, every night, as Precious so elegantly put it: "a rain of pure light" danced across the sky, an eerily beautiful counterpoint to the general anarchy that resulted from the Draining in the realm of mortals, down here on the ground.   
  
I allowed myself a secret little smile as I watched the embers of the cookfire flicker and fade. Everybody else - including me - became inured to the constant meteor shower by the time we were ten. But not Precious, she was just too nice for that.   
  
Hells, without her, I'd probably have been dead by then. At least this way I had something useful to do with my life. That was more than most people could say.   
  
Of course, _that_ wasn't the reasons I hauled myself up that rock to sit beside her. Nope, the _real_ reason, so I told myself, was that if she was going to spend so much time looking at the sky, we'd need another lookout who would actually look out for danger…Heh. Yeah, right.   
  
So I sat atop the stone and I shaded my eyes with one hand from the constant flickering of the Rain and I gazed west, back towards Kalm. We'd left the fertile strip on land on which it sat days ago, so the city was far out of sight. But perhaps…yes, there it was. In the final glow of twilight I made out a distinctly discolored section of sky, so small it might have been a trick of the light, but I doubted that. My eyes were pretty sharp, and trained for exactly this.   
  
That piece of sky was the cloud of sand kicked up by whatever our pursuer's transportation happened to be. Yesterday it had been only barely perceptible, but today it had been easy to make out all afternoon, and they hadn't stopped for the night, at least, not yet. If they kept that kind of a pace up we would meet sometime tomorrow afternoon.   
  
Time to tell a certain someone I hadn't been entirely truthful about this journey when we started out…   
  
"Hey, Precious-" I began.   
  
"Wait, let me guess, bro." She turned towards me with a self-satisfied grin. "You've decided to tell me just _now_ about whoever it is that's been following us all day? That dust cloud was pretty obvious you know." I did my best to conceal my surprise, unsuccessfully, of course. She stuck her tongue out at me in girlish indignation. "Just because I haven't been hanging around bandits and raiders my whole life doesn't mean I don't have at least _some_ idea of how to survive in the wilds."   
  
Ouch. My pride bickered with my sense of humor over whether or not I should laugh. The fight ended when my love of irony stepped into the ring and gave them both a whooping. I ended up letting out a kind of ragged cross between a chuckle and an offended sniff. Recovering my composure, I tried to burst her bubble, "And I suppose you can guess when they're going to catch us tomorrow too, eh?"   
  
Ha! Got her. My sibling turned her head a bit to the side, away from me, and mumbled, "I didn't say I knew a _lot_ about the desert…"   
  
With a herculean effort of will, I kept a grin off my face. "Well, just so you know, it should be sometime in midafternoon tomorrow if they're going to be riding the whole night. If they camp for at least a few hours, they might not catch up until twilight."   
  
"Oh. Just wonderful…" Precious muttered, more or less to herself. She'd gone into planning mode; the Stone Rain entirely forgotten.   
  
There was another reason I marveled so often at her. She may be girlish and innocent most of the time, but when push came to shove she was a pretty good fighter. Of course, when you were her age and had her looks you _had_ to be, even in a town as lawful (relative to the rest of the world, at least) as Kalm, and even with me for an older brother.   
  
After a lengthy pause, she said, "I don't suppose you've come up with a brilliant plan of escape, then?"   
  
This time I didn't mind letting a smile creep across my face. "As a matter of fact, I do." I turned myself around and pointed to the east, away from our pursuers. "By noon tomorrow we'll reach those sandstone cliffs, which happen to be a huge maze of ravines. We can take the motorcycle into them and find some secluded little nook with overlooking rocks. Considering what a great job they've done tracking us so far, they'll be able to find us even if I try to cover our tracks. Only we'll be waiting for them." Okay, so it wasn't exactly "brilliant", but it was the best I could do.   
  
She was silent for a while, thinking on that. Eventually she spoke up again. "There is one thing you've neglected to mention this whole time. Why is someone after us in the first place?" She looked on me with pale violet eyes that knew I'd hoped she wouldn't think of this.   
  
Oh yeah…. the whole 'violet eyes' thing. That was all the Draining's fault. When Holy drew all the power it needed to stop Meteor from the lifestream, it created enough of a disturbance to screw all sorts of stuff up. Materia disintegrated, some old mountains collapsed and some new ones sprung up, most of the Planet dried out…and people changed. Me and Prec, we got off light. Plenty of people ended up with shit lots worse than a strange eye color.   
  
But I digress, as she continued. "Wait, let me guess again. Just where did you get the cycle from?" Sigh. She was a good guesser…   
  
With somewhat less than my usual stellar smoothness, I started to explain how I was, of course, completely faultless. "Well, if you really want to know, I borrowed-"   
  
"You mean 'stole' of course." She corrected. "_I_, let alone anyone else, wouldn't let you borrow a piece of hardware that nice."   
  
"Can we just say 'liberated' then?"   
  
"'Liberating' gets you killed just as dead."   
  
With a sigh, I conceded the point. "Whatever you want to call it, I got the cycle from…Cabutler's…motor stables. That's why-"   
  
"_Cabutler?!_" She groaned and buried her face in her hands. "Oh…Holy damn it Sindai! You should _know_ better than that!" I could see she was just getting started. She was scared..   
  
"Hey, now…" I held up a hand, "Listen for a second before getting mad."   
  
She quieted almost immediately, but didn't look happy about it. I caught a hint of a very rude-sounding mumble about "Morons who don't know when to call it quits…"   
  
"I'm absolutely certain I wasn't identified by anyone when I took the bike. And I sure as the stones rain didn't leave behind any evidence. You know about the fire that ate up half his compound that night, right? I did a pretty thorough job covering my tracks." She didn't show any surprise at the news that I had decided to dabble in arson. I'd been a pain in the Don's ass for years.   
  
Cabutler (or 'Don Cabutler' to those who knew he was also the man behind most, if not all, of the organized crime in Kalm) was the owner of the biggest merchant company on the East Continent. Those in his organization referred to him simply as "the Don" to maintain secrecy. Anyone who dug too deeply into his identity had a nasty tendency to end up being dug deeply themselves, as in six-feet-underground-deeply.   
  
Okay, so that sounded stupid. But you get the idea. Cabutler was the second-to-last person in Kalm anyone would want to screw with, right after Tifa, the town's mayor/sheriff/bar owner, who'd never quite gotten around to putting a stop to him in spite of my best efforts.   
  
"But if you weren't seen, then why would someone be after us? They had to have come from Kalm, and they left at least a day or two after we did." Had to give the girl credit. She found the great, gaping hole in my logic in a second flat.   
  
I shrugged. "How should I know? It doesn't really matter, anyways. Their intentions can't be good, and they're going to catch up before we can get to Thorn and lose ourselves in some outbound caravan."   
  
She simply looked at me and nodded, putting aside her what-ifs just as I had. What would happen, would happen. All we could do was our best.   
  
"Now you turn in. I'll take first watch."   
  
Not another word was spoken that night. I sat atop the sandstone pillar and continued to worry away at all the possible ways we could end up getting captured, robbed, or worse.   
  
We may have been in the middle of a desert, but it was still a cool night under the eyeblink-long flickers of the Stone Rain. The air was utterly still. Stagnant. Eventually I could stand the silence no longer and I leapt down, onto the edge of the crater, to pace.   
  
Holy-bedamned nervous energy…I was getting too tense. Only one way to fix that.   
  
Breathing deep and evenly, I withdrew my greatest possession and weapon from the dust-covered, oft-patched long coat I wore. I held it up to the sky and examined it, one of the last inventions of a dying civilization. The Steel Rose.   
  
And that was exactly what it was - or at least, what it looked like. A rose cast from red-tinted steel. Only this was no ordinary sculpture…   
  
I concentrated for a moment. I pictured a sword in my hand. I imagined it perfectly and held it there in my mind, each and every detail.   
  
Steel flowed and ran like melting wax. A stem thickened and leaves disappeared. A long, elegant blade sprang from within the rose's petals. The petals themselves drew back and spread out into a crossguard. When all was done, I was left holding a simple, unadorned rapier where a flower had been not a second before.   
  
An amazing invention it was, indeed.   
  
Silently, I began my self-taught fencing exercises. A dozen phantom opponents swarmed about me.   
  
_Thrust-swing-parry- -_   
  
Yet this time…my mind did not clear. I could find no rhythm for my movements. Instead of clearing of all thoughts, my mind was yanked back to Kalm, to thoughts of my childhood and the world around me.   
  
_Dodge-twist-jump- -_   
  
So much pain…so much anger…   
  
_Backstep-swipe-return-_   
  
Half the _world_ died in a single night! People, animals, plants, _everything._ Midgar, the center of civilization, was turned into a pile of rubble. Everything was broken, everything was shattered, and it could never be rebuilt…   
  
_Extend-circle-spin-_   
  
In saving the Planet, Avalanche destroyed its inhabitants. Many people never forgave them for that, though they deserved no blame.   
  
_Return-adjust-thrust-_   
  
And so the cycle perpetuated itself. In their hatred for Avalanche, people refused to allow them to help restore order. And so there was no one to stop the rival ganglords and bandit-tribes from taking over most of the world, which only made things worse. There were exceptions, but they were few and far between, and those havens would die with their protectors.   
  
_Thrust-fade-kick-_   
  
That was why I could never enjoy being around Tifa, back in Kalm. She had this sense of …weariness, perhaps…about her, always. Avalanche was through, most of it's members either dead or missing. Barret, Nanaki, Reeve, even Cloud…   
  
_-And rest._   
  
Damned exercise, it hadn't done a thing. Now I felt even worse. Oh well. At least I was still awake and still on lookout duty. Nothing better to do in this ancients-forsaken piece of desert.   
  
_Begin again-_   
  
And then there was my _own_ family. Ha. If you could even call it that anymore. Drunken dad. Dead mom. Pretty standard nowadays, actually.   
  
_Attack-defend-dodge-_   
  
So often I wonder - as everyone left alive must - if things wouldn't have been better if Sephiroth had just gone ahead and destroyed the damned Planet.   
  
_-Stop again._   
  
I shook my head angrily. What in the hells had come over me? Still in a rage at being in a rage, I slashed at the rock pillar with the Rose. The blade was more than sharp enough to cut stone, and ended up embedded a good two inches in the side of the rock. Unreasonable as I felt, I cursed at the sword for having the gall to wedge itself into sandstone too tightly to be pulled out.   
  
My concentration on it broken, the Rose flowed back into it's regular shape. Disgusted with myself, I slipped the mutable weapon back into my long coat. What had happened? Losing control like that wasn't like me at all…   
  
Deeply troubled, not only by what had just transpired, but by the prospects of the morrow, I returned to the top of the pillar to wait out the rest of my watch.   
  
And so I watched.   
  
And so I brooded. 

* * *

  
  
Miles and miles westward, around a fire of their own, two men sat. One ate, while the other sat, perfectly still, and looked into dancing flames as if he could visions within them.   
  
The eating man was used to this. His companion rarely spoke, even when they were alone. Both men were content with this arrangement, for reasons no one but themselves could guess at.   
  
Then, abruptly, the staring man jerked. His eyes regained focus and he looked around, only slightly frantic. The eating man put down his rations and leaned forwards. This, too, was not unusual behavior for the staring man, but it usually signified something important.   
  
"What is it?" asked the concerned man.   
  
"Something…strange…"   
  
"Is it the ones we're following?"   
  
"Yes…and no…"   
  
The other man leaned back and sighed. His companion's answers could be more than frustrating at times…but becoming exasperated would not help. "Could you possibly be any more specific?"   
  
"It was something…an object. A sword - no - a flower, one of them had…It… disrupted…"   
  
Slowly, the older man coached all he could out of his partner. It did not help. The meaning of what he'd seen - if there was any meaning to it at all - remained as opaque as it had ever been. He went to sleep that night untroubled. They'd find out what strange significance these two marks had tomorrow, when they caught them.

****

Chapter 2: _"That was sloppy of me…"_

  
  
  
With the sun almost halfway above the horizon, Precious roused me from my sleep.   
  
As she packed, I did my best to hide the signs of our passing. The ashes of the fire were scattered and covered by kicked sand, our footprints smoothed over. In a matter of minutes, we left that crater to the desert, exactly as we found it.   
  
Not that that was going to be very helpful, of course. I'd done the same every night since we'd left Kalm, and it hadn't troubled whoever was after us in the least. That was what worried me, despite all the assurances I gave both my sister and myself. Once you could see the dust raised by another person traveling across the sand, anyone could track anyone, but we'd had at least a two-day headstart. They should not have been able to follow a trail that cold so well as they had.   
  
The dust cloud to our west was there in the morning, larger than ever.   
  
I felt far better than I had last night. Driving through the desert did that to me; with so much to concentrate on – not running into a rock and crashing rather painfully, for example – besides my own worries, I found the kind of peace enjoyed only rarely by anyone.   
  
We were making good time. The cycle was an older model, probably dating back years before the Draining, but had been maintained extraordinarily well. It was only now beginning to show signs of sand getting into the cracks of the machinery. I'd better clean it pretty soon…   
  
We roared into the sandstone maze just a short while after noon. It was absolutely perfect for our purposes; a maze of ravines, boulders, towers, and gulches so convoluted it took only minutes to find our ambush spot, a small cul-de-sac. It was bordered on the downhill side by a head-high line of boulders which windblown sand had gathered against, forming a reversed slope that slanted down into the rock wall that stood uphill.   
  
I took up a position behind a boulder which stood somewhat taller than the rest on the uphill wall, near the entrance, while Precious got into place at the "back" of the cul-de-sac, across from the only way a vehicle could get in.   
  
When all was arranged as I wanted it I called down to Precious, "Everything ready down there?"   
  
"What's there to get ready?" She answered rhetorically. "I get to be the bait, while you jump down and surprise them. I wouldn't call it rocket science."   
  
I grimaced at that. She was right, of course, but there's only so much a guy can strategize with so few resources. I had planned, after all, not to be pursued in the first place. "Fine." I called back, "I'll warn you when they reach the cliffs. Have fun waiting."   
  
No reply came, but I heard the _whoosh-CRACK_ of a steel ball at the end of fifteen-foot chain putting a significant dent into the rock that separated us. I gave a rueful smile. She might never have been very interested beyond self-defense, but she was still a pretty mean fighter with that ball and chain.   
  
For some time thereafter I could hear the constant clatter and _whoosh_ of her restlessly going through her warm ups, awaiting action, any action.   
  
I sighed and wished I had a gun, or maybe some explosives.   
  
For my own part, I passed the time in contemplation, watching that smudge in the distance grow larger. Idly, I pulled a pair of small throwing knives from under my long, dust-browned long coat and began to make them flip from finger to finger across my knuckles.   
  
Now…I wondered if my guess was correct; was it this particular pair of bounty hunters who was after us? I shaded my eyes with one hand and looked off into the distance. No. They were still too far away to tell. Ah well, I'd know in just a few minutes…   
  
Perhaps an hour, at most… 

* * *

  
  
Not a half-dozen miles to the west, a large, weather-beaten truck and an equally scuffed-up cycle closed in on the sandstone formations.   
  
Suddenly, the cycle wove around in front of the truck and its rider waved to the driver of the larger vehicle. Obediently, the truck slowed down and stopped as the cycle did the same.   
  
"What is it?" The older man called to his partner through the long-since broken window of the truck.   
  
"They've stopped." The younger man said, staring off towards the rocks, though his eyes seemed unfocused. "They're in the middle of the cliffs."   
  
"Trying to ambush us?"   
  
"Yes."   
  
The older man chewed on that for a moment. He probably would have tried the same thing in their position; that meant these kids were smart. The difference, he supposed, was that he would have been successful, had he been them.   
  
"All right…" The older man, apparently leader of their little team, began. "We keep going until we reach the start of all those ravines and crevasses. I'll leave the truck there and climb up myself. You give me a couple of minutes to get in behind them, then go roaring straight in. Got it?"   
  
The other man nodded his assent, and that was that. 

* * *

  
  
_I really need to look into retiring._ Thought the man as he hauled himself over a particularly rough rock face. _I must have enough gil saved up by now._ The palm of one of his hands was badly scraped from run-in with a jagged quartz projection a minute ago. _A nice little house with a white picket fence. Settle down with Silver. Yeah, that'd be great…_   
  
Of course there were no nice little houses with white picket fences anymore, but he was getting _old_ dammit – just past thirty, now – and he ought to be able to complain about this crap to himself.   
  
Slowly, he poked his head over the last rock ridge between himself and his targets. Ah. There they were, just like Hunter'd said. The guy was on the ledge below him, looking down into the cul-de-sac. The bounty hunter double-checked the straps on his simple wooden buckler and unslung his quarterstaff from his back. Any second now…   
  
_VVVRRRROOOOMMMM!_   
  
The sound of the cycle's engine rose from rumble to shriek in less than a second. Dust fountained up from the cul-de-sac. The older man couldn't see what was happening down there, but this was his cue…   
  
Silent as a shadow in the evening sun, he leapt onto the rocks directly behind his target. Quiet he was, but the sound of boots on rough stone was still loud enough for his target to hear. Without an instant's hesitation the mark spun, threw a knife wildly at the shadow behind him, and dived off the rocks into the cul-de-sac.   
  
_Thunk!_ In the instant it took the knife to cover the distance between the mark's hand and the man's chest the bounty hunter was able to snap his wooden buckler in front of the blade. _Damn._ That was too close. The little bastard was _fast._   
  
After only a moment's hesitation, he followed the mark over the edge of the rocks. It was only a ten-foot drop, but the mark had taken it more or less face-first and was only now leaping back to his feet. His hands became blurs and it took every ounce of instinct the older bounty hunter possessed to block every knife. _Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-_   
  
The older man stole a moment to glance off to the other side of the cul-de-sac. His partner was wrestling the girl to the ground now; it looked like she wouldn't be much trouble. Now, back to kicking the shit out of this kid…   
  
He leapt forwards, raising his staff for a strike. The younger man with scarlet eyes (a byproduct of the Draining, no doubt) backpedaled, his hand reaching into his long coat. There was a blur of motion and he held in his hand a long, thinly curved rapier. Now he leaped forwards, testing the older man with a series of strikes that came one on top of the other.   
  
The kid was good, there was no doubt about that…but the Shadow Walker was better. He'd not earned his place as most feared bounty hunter on the Eastern Continent by _losing_ any fights. Ever.   
  
Almost instantly, the momentum of the fight was reversed. Where the red-eyed young man once attacked, now he was driven back and pressed as badly as he'd ever been. The Walker spun his staff quick as a tornado, striking at any opening, seeking any hole in the web of reddish steel (what an odd colored sword…) around his opponent.   
  
It took a long time – far too long, in the Walker's estimation _(I really must be getting old)_ – but eventually the younger man made a mistake. Eventually he miscalculated a parry by a full inch or so. Eventually…one tip of the staff batted the sword's blade far aside, while the other whispered through the air to tap him in the temple, just to the right of one of those red, red eyes.   
  
He crumpled to the ground, bleeding from the side of his face where the blow had torn the skin. The older man stood over him a moment, slowing his breathing back down to normal. "Well…that was the first decent workout I've had in a while." He murmured to himself. He then glanced at the wound on the side of the kid's head. "That was sloppy of me, hit him too damn hard. Ah well…serves the bastard right, trying to stick a half-dozen damned knives into me..."   
  
He froze, eyes caught and held by something next to the unconscious mark. "What in the hells?"   
  
The kid's sword…it was…_changing_… right there on the ground. It was like nothing he'd ever seen before - and that was saying a lot. That strange, reddish steel ran like it was melting under the sun, collapsing in on itself, metamorphasizing into…a flower?   
  
Hesitating, the bounty hunter checked on his partner's progress. No problem there; he'd rendered the girl unconscious already. The older man turned back to the metallic flower and gingerly picked it up. Nothing happened.   
  
And, for one of a scant handful of times in his entire life, he repeated himself. "What in the hells?"

****

Chapter 3: _"…wouldn't stand a chance…"_

  
  
  
You know, if someone walked up to me on the street and asked me what I thought the best and the worst parts of being knocked unconscious were, I would answer that they were one and the same: waking up.   
  
Naturally, waking up is the part of being unconscious that I looked forward to the most, since it meant that I probably hadn't received any serious brain damage and would eventually recover fully from the brief trip to dreamy-land. Whoopee.   
  
On the other hand, consciousness means that your brain works correctly. And when your brain works correctly you can receive signals from all those various nerves in your body. And when you can feel everything in your body correctly - you can probably see where this is going - it means that you can feel the _pain_ nerves as well.   
  
One word: _Ouch._   
  
It felt the entire left side of my head was on _fire._ Involuntarily, I groaned as loud as I could and flopped around a little. At about that point I realized I should have tried to wake up without letting anyone know. Oops.   
  
I opened my eyes - or at least, my right eye; my left eye seemed to be swollen shut - and immediately closed them again. _Ouch._ I'd been looking right into the holydamned fire! I rolled my head over and opened my eye again. Now that was better. It took a few seconds, but at least I could focus on the stars. Ah, and there was a meteorite-streak as well.   
  
I tried to raise a hand to my head but found them bound under me. I tested my legs, same story there. So much for doing anything useful with my newfound consciousness…   
  
"Hey, well lookit this." Someone spoke from across the fire. I couldn't see anything through the glare. "Sword-kid's awake."   
  
I groaned again, as much from the fact that my captor was a smartass as from the pain. "Water?" I croaked out hopefully.   
  
"Why sure." Someone walked around the fire and over to me. I still couldn't tell a damn thing about him. Stupid fire-silhouetting, he had probably put me here on purpose just so I'd be blind as a bat.   
  
The man grabbed me by the front of my shirt and hauled me up and back none too gently, propping me up against some rock. I had to stifle another groan; even moving my head around like that hurt.   
  
"This should brighten you up a bit." The figure in front of me brought something to my lips and tilted it. I drank without hesitation. Sure, it could've been poison, but that would have been a welcome relief from the pain as well.   
  
I almost choked in surprise at the feeling that spread through me. Holy! It wasn't water; it was like nothing I'd ever tasted before. "Whoa!" I gasped out, "What-?"   
  
"Just water with a little bit of old-style healing potion mixed in. More than enough for that little gash on your thick skull."   
  
My vision cleared and the pain started to fade. Now I could see well enough to look beyond the fire. There was another man sitting behind it, and a cycle and a big truck of some kind behind him. No sign of Precious though….   
  
"Where's the girl?" I asked, feigning indifference as best I could.   
  
It was tough to tell, since he still faced away from the fire and all, but I think the man smiled as he squatted down on his heels in front of me. "You mean you sister?" I gave myself away with a wince before I could clamp down. "Yeah, you two look pretty much alike. No reason for you to worry, though. She's safe and sound, up in the truck. Now-"   
  
"Wait." I broke in. "I bet I can guess the next part of this: 'Now you tell me everything I want to know, and she _stays_ safe that way.' Right?"   
  
He actually laughed out loud at that one. "No, actually I was going to say something completely different. But that's a very good idea. Thanks."   
  
"Asshole."   
  
He kept smiling, completely unperturbed. "Believe it or not, it doesn't matter to me who you are or why you were out here or anything like that. I was only curious about…this…" He pulled the Steel Rose out of a pocket somewhere and twirled it between his fingers.   
  
I sighed and cursed a little more. He merely continued spinning the little metal blossom about, patiently.   
  
"So?" He asked, after I'd finished.   
  
"None of your damn business."   
  
"I thought you'd feel that way. Oh well, it was worth a try." He slipped it back in his pocket. "I'll just keep it then, I guess. I doubt you'll need it once we get back to Kalm."   
  
I didn't trust myself to reply to that. 

* * *

  
  
The rest of the trip back towards Kalm passed in minutes. At least, the boring parts did.   
  
Not much worth mentioning happened. We'd get woken up, eat and drink a little, get driven across the same, featureless land for the entire day, eat dinner, then sleep.   
  
Precious and I were untied, but tossed in this big-barred-cage thing in the back of the truck. As near as I could tell, it was escape-proof so long as I couldn't get any of my tools or weapons, and of course all those were stored in the other half of the truck. Not much chance for escape then, not that I let that stop me from trying. I managed to force the two bounty hunters to knock me out a half-dozen more times.   
  
Precious started to worry, I told her not to. I'd been in worse situations before, though not many…   
  
When I wasn't trying to escape, I talked to the two guys who'd captured us. I asked all kinds of stuff. What their names were, where they were born, how they grew up. The usual stuff. Most of the people I tried stuff like that on ended up gagging me after a couple of days. These two didn't.   
  
The younger one never answered my questions. He'd just look away and pretend he didn't hear me. Not that that was surprising. I hardly ever heard him talk at all, even to his partner. Eventually I got this strong urge to stop bugging him, so I did.   
  
The older guy though…he never minded talking. I guess it was because he was so used to only traveling with silent-man, but that didn't matter. It was a good way to pass the time, and who knew? I may even have convinced him to let us go.   
  
Yeah…right. 

* * *

  
  
"You know, I just realized something."   
  
It was dinnertime again, me and Prec got to have our hands untied so we could eat while the two bounty hunters - who'd eaten first, of course - watched us.   
  
The older man responded like he always did. "And what's that?"   
  
"You two guys, I recognize you now."   
  
"Liar. It couldn't possibly have taken you this long to figure out who we are."   
  
I shrugged. He was right, of course. "You're Shadow Walker, and he's Soul Hunter." I pointed to each of them while I said it. "Either of you got real names?"   
  
"Not that I'm going to tell you."   
  
"Alright." No point in pestering him about it anymore then…let's see, what else… "So where'd you learn to fight like that with the staff?"   
  
"No place in particular."   
  
"Heh. Kinda like me then. I just developed my own style. You're pretty good, you know."   
  
"'Pretty' good?"   
  
"Alright then, very good. Best I've ever seen. You think you could beat the Flayer?"   
  
"Nope. I wouldn't stand a chance."   
  
"How about a blooder?"   
  
"Maybe a slow one."   
  
"What about Hunter?"  
  
A particularly bright piece of Meteor lit the entire sky white for an instant. He glanced up, then over at his partner, before answering. "Nah, he's not quite as good, but he's got some other talents that more than make up for it."   
  
"Like what?"   
  
"Ask him."   
  
I glanced over to the silent man. He actually looked younger than me, though not by much, maybe Prec's age. Still, I had no desire whatsoever to bother him. It wasn't anything definite. I wasn't scared of him, certainly. I just didn't…feel like it. Weird.   
  
I realized I'd been staring, and quickly returned to my dinner. 

* * *

  
  
When we returned to Kalm, a few nights of fruitless conversation later, we found the impossible waiting for us. 

****

Chapter 4: _"…revenge is always a pretty good motivation…"_

  
  
  
Gone.   
  
Kalm was…gone.   
  
Ashes. Burnt timbers. The fire-gutted shells of buildings. Where the thriving city of Kalm had lain not a week a go, now only bones remained.   
  
Even the few farms that had been eked out of the parched soil around the city had been torched.   
  
I'd seen plenty of killing before. Murders, oasis massacres, even the razing of a small town. But this…It was perhaps the greatest mass killing since the Draining itself, twenty-five years ago.   
  
As he saw the signs of devastation, still many miles out, Walker sped up. We were on the well-worn path of the eastern merchant's route now, but it still made us captives rattle around like like two beans in a maraca.   
  
A minute or so later, we screeched to a halt barely a dozen feet outside of town. (The streets were too choked with wreckage to enter.) Walker jumped out of the truck almost before it had stopped, running over to where Hunter roared to a stop. They exchanged words, just a bit too softly for me to hear. Walker seemed…terrified, almost.   
  
They finished speaking. Hunter gunned the motor on his cycle and roared off around the edge of the blasted city..   
  
Looking mad as hell, Walker came back over to our tiny prison and reached into his pockets for something.   
  
I froze. If he and Hunter'd been working for someone in Kalm, and they were dead…he didn't have any reason to keep us around. I tensed and placed myself between him and Precious, if he pulled a gun…   
  
He pulled something small out and started to bring it up towards the door. I got ready to move; it was a-   
  
-Key.   
  
Whew. Silly me.   
  
He unlocked the door and threw it open on rusty, squealing hinges. "You two, get out. _Now._"   
  
I did what he said, yanking Precious after me. Damn it all to the lifestream, she'd gone all unresponsive, too devastated by what had happened to our home. We didn't have any time for grief right this instant.   
  
Walker watched us coldly, all trace of the congeniality of the past days gone. When we were out, he said "Don't move." And jumped into the storage section on the back of the truck. A few seconds later, all of our supplies and weapons came flying up over the edge of the truck, to land at our feet. Eventually, Walker followed.   
  
I looked through the pile, then bent over, fingering my throwing knives. "Where's the metal flower?" I looked up at the bounty hunter. "It's an heirloom, lots of sentimental value to me." I was telling most of the truth.   
  
He stared stonily at me for a few seconds, considering. I returned his stare. I was _not_ going to let him keep the Rose.   
  
At last he reached inside his jacket again. "All right…you can have whatever-the-hell-that-thing-is back." He pulled out the Rose and tossed it to me. I caught it lightly with a great deal of relief. "But we're keeping your cycle. There isn't enough gas left in Hunter's cycle or the truck to make it anywhere, so we need what's in its tank."   
  
Off in the distance, a low rumble announced Hunter's return.   
  
I snarled. "Like hell you are-"   
  
"_Wait._" He hissed at me, and for a moment the sheer force of will behind that one word froze my anger. "I need to talk to Hunter. Then we can fight."   
  
I crossed my arms and glared at him. He turned - just as Hunter rode into view around a half-collapsed building - and walked over to meet him.   
  
The Steel Rose rippled in my hand, reacting to my emotional turmoil. Without conscious direction, it would assume no new shape, but still…it twisted slightly, as if trying to distance itself from me.   
  
I shoved it angrily in a pocket before turning around to cheer Precious up. Doubtless I'd gain nothing by trying to eavesdrop on Hunter's report, and Holy knew I would need Prec's help if it did come to a fight… 

* * *

  
  
"What did you find?"   
  
"She's alive."   
  
"Thank Holy! Where?"   
  
"The trail goes southwest. And there are others."   
  
"Who?"   
  
"Many, many others. Some warm, some cold, all laced with violence. It felt like an army."   
  
"Did you recognize any other individual people?"   
  
"Yes. There was the man who hired us…and others, three others who stood out. Two who felt extremely…strong, and cold. One who felt like many on top of one another."   
  
"_Dammit!_ How are we supposed to rescue Silver from the Five?"   
  
Pause.   
  
"Fine. It doesn't matter right now anyways; we'll find a way. I'll go deal with the kids…"   
  
"Wait."   
  
"What?"   
  
"Don't leave them here."   
  
"Why the hell not? We don't have the fuel to get all the way to Brinktown without their cycle."   
  
"There is something…special…about that weapon they have."   
  
"You mean the flower-thing?"   
  
"Yes."   
  
"Fine then, I'll just take it back and we'll be on our way. Maybe the whatever-it-is will help us against the Five."   
  
"No."   
  
"What? What's wrong with that plan?"   
  
"Just…no. I don't know why, but they cannot be separated."   
  
Pause. 

* * *

  
  
"There, you feeling better now Prec?" I asked hopefully.   
  
"Sort of…" She put down the waterskin and looked back over the ruins of Kalm. I sighed.   
  
"Look, it happened, it's done. All we can do is pick up and move on, like our parents did, like everyone did after the Draining."   
  
"Yeah, you're right…" She brightened slightly. I smiled. _Finally._ "At least now we don't have to worry about being killed because you suck as a thief."   
  
I laughed. There was the Precious I knew. I glanced behind me. "Uh-oh. Looks like they're through with their little chat."   
  
Both of us stood up to face the pair of bounty hunters. Immediately I noticed a change in Walker's demeanor. He looked as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders…yet he still wasn't happy about it.   
  
Hunter, as always, didn't look like much of anything in specific at all.   
  
Staring at Walker, I asked. "So, what's it gonna be?" I popped my knuckles and sounded as mean as I possibly could. It wasn't difficult, considering we were still standing around a dozen feet from the ruins of my childhood.   
  
Walker gave a little snort. "Don't be melodramatic. We're still keeping your damned cycle." He held up a hand to stall anything I might have to say about that. "But we can take you with us to Brinktown if you want."   
  
I stood stock-still, shocked. Precious must have been just as stunned, since she didn't say anything either. Eventually I recovered, just a bit. "Wait a minute…what'd Hunter find about…who did this?"   
  
"Oh, he only confirmed what I'd already guessed at. It was the Faceless Man and a couple of the other Five. There's no telling who, exactly, but they're the only ones who could have beaten Tifa. That also explains the general state of the area…it must have been one hell of a magical duel."   
  
I turned around and looked at Precious, she shrugged. She sure didn't have any more idea about what to do than I did. "Why would we want to come with you?"   
  
He started walking a wide circle around the two of us. Hunter followed. "Well…revenge is always a pretty good motivation, I guess. Hunter says their army is heading back west, generally towards Brinktown."   
  
"Revenge?" This time, I was the one who snorted. "Against the Five? I'm angry; not suicidal."   
  
"Ah…" Walker grinned, just a little wickedly, and drew out the moment. He knew something. "Then you could always set your sights a little lower. It seems that even with a three-to-one advantage, the Faceless wanted someone on the inside. You probably know the guy; his name's…Cabutler."   
  
For the second time, both Precious and I were frozen in shock. This time, however, Precious broke the silence. "Wait a second, isn't he the guy who hired you two to come after us? And how the heck can this Hunter guy tell exactly who survived and who didn't?"   
  
"The answer to your first question is…yes. But I'd consider that particular contract null and void considering how likely it is the Five will kill all four of us out of hand if we take you back to them. For your second question, you'll have to ask him." Walker nodded towards his partner.   
  
My sister looked at the younger man, but didn't say anything more. Strange.   
  
I considered our options for a long moment. Realistically, we couldn't beat Walker and Hunter in an even fight, so we'd have to wait here until some merchants or travelers or something came by and we could hitch a ride. And revenge did hold a certain appeal at the moment…I was low on cash, and didn't have anything else to do.   
  
"Alright then. We're coming with you…but I'm _not_ riding in that Ancients-damned cage!"   
  
"Hey, whatever you say…" 

****

Chapter 5: _"Not according to the hookers…"_

  
  
  
About the travelling part, there's not much to be said. It was more or less the same as the trip to Kalm had been, except the back of the truck was unlocked and we got to go around untied all the time. Hooray.   
  
Not too far out from Brinktown, just as the desert was fading away to grassland (since there's this river next to Brinktown that didn't use to be there) Walker said that Hunter said that the trail had split up. Most of the army was bypassing Brinktown entirely and heading straight back to the Western Continent, while a small group - including Cabutler - was going towards the city.   
  
There wasn't much to debate about which group to follow; we barely had enough gas to get to Brinktown. Even emptying the tank from my stolen cycle to top off the others, we covered the last few miles in on fumes alone.   
  
I found the conversation no more fruitful than it'd ever been. Walker was intentionally enigmatic; I think he really got a kick out of finding a thousand and one different and new ways of saying "maybe" every time I talked to him. Hunter just kinda stayed inconspicuous. I know that sounds tough in a crowd of four, but he managed, somehow.   
  
Travelling the main roads, it was a pretty quick trip all the way around Midgar's ruins and down what used to be the coast of the Eastern Continent. We passed plenty of people going both directions, but didn't bother to tell anyone bound for Kalm that they weren't going to find much there anymore. News of that would travel fast enough on it's own. 

* * *

  
  
Ah…Brinktown.   
  
Jewel of the Eastern Continent, Gateway to the West, largest city remaining on the Planet (except, possibly, Wutai), formerly known as Junon; I firmly believe that Brinktown could be summed up in three words.   
  
"Smelly," "crowded," and "dangerous."   
  
Let's see now, where to begin…   
  
First off, the whole "brink" part. That would be where the coastline of the Inland Sea (which didn't use to be inland) used to be. When the Planet dried out, the oceanlevel dropped quite a bit, hence, now there are land bridges connecting both the north and the south ends of the Eastern and Western Continents, with the Inland Sea between them. Brinktown sits teetering right on the edge of the drop-off where the continental shelf ends, the "Brink."   
  
That's half the important elements of the geography surrounding the city. The other half is "the River." That's it, just "the River." It doesn't need a specific name, since it's the only large river for a hundred miles in all directions. Brinktown really lucked out on that one. The chaos the Draining wreaked on the Planet's surface just happened to cut a channel down from the Midgar Mountains to nearby Junon, making it one of the few places left on the entire Planet that could be reliably farmed.   
  
So anyways, we arrived there… 

* * *

  
  
After twenty-five years of more or less continual deconstruction and reconstruction, there wasn't much left of Junon's original architecture. Oh, the main structural supports that kept the whole thing from going over the Brink were still there, and a good deal of the central Shinra tower, but not much else. I hear there's this running, city-wide bet on when one of the upper levels is gonna collapse entirely. Minor collapses actually happened fairly often, but there'd never been a major catastrophe-level one. Most of the population held to the notion that it was only a matter of time, though. What optimists.   
  
Funny, that. It resulted in kind of a reverse-housing situation. Whereas you'd expect all the wealthy, successful types to live "up top" like in the old days, they actually ended up living in the "new" part of town, outside the old city limits, in houses built of materials cannibalized from the upper levels of the "old" town. That way they would neither fall to their deaths nor be crushed in the event of a collapse. Smart move, really.   
  
We (since Walker's truck was so damn big) had to go in through the new part. It was pretty nice, actually. Better than I remembered it. There were no gates or guards or walls or anything like that around the edge of the city. No reason to have any of that when you don't have much of a government to speak of. Like I said before, most of the buildings in that part of town were big, almost fortress-like residences for the larger-scale bosses and merchants.   
  
Once we found a little out-of-the-way nook big enough to fit the vehicles in, Walker shut down the truck and jumped out of the cab. Hunter put the stand down and got off his cycle, while Prec and I swung open the door to the back of the truck and jumped down.   
  
I coughed and tried to shake some of the trail dust off my clothes, my hair, and…everything else. All of us were practically caked in the stuff by now, our own sweat fusing it into one, big tannish second skin. _Hmm, gotta go find some place to get a bath. Preferably with company…I wonder if that one place near Red's is still around…with that one girl, what was the name…?_   
  
But alas, my mental delving into some of my more pleasant memories from the last time I'd been through town was short lived. Walker had to butt in with all his "planning" and "meeting" crap.   
  
After consulting with Hunter for a moment (whoa, what a surprise) the older man walked over to my leaning-spot on the side of his truck and informed us. "Hunter says they're all still in the city. Apparently, we were only a day or so behind them. I need to go-"   
  
I interrupted. "Yeah yeah, I know. You need to go get some gas. Don't worry about us-"   
  
"Oh, I don't." He interjected acidly. Apparently he wasn't too pleased with being interrupted. Too bad for him I didn't care.   
  
"-We got a bunch of friends who live somewhere in the middle levels. We'll go find them and see if they know anyone who can help us find Cabutler. Shouldn't take us long."   
  
He narrowed his eyes, looking us up and down. That tightness was still there, like he was terribly worried about something. He'd been like that since Kalm. _I wonder…_   
  
"All right. You go find these friends of yours and get us a place to stay. I'm going to go get more supplies and talk to some contacts of my own. Remember, we might have to leave at any time." He glanced behind himself, at Hunter, then back at us. "And…Hunter will go with you. I won't need him, and you'll be in the most crowded part of the city, where they would naturally go to hide."   
  
Now this didn't sound good. I looked over at Precious and asked quietly. "What do you think?"   
  
She looked thoughtfully past me at the younger man. "I don't know…he doesn't do much. But…" She trailed off, chewing her lip nervously. _Of course,_ I realized, _Hunter was the one who overpowered her back when they caught us on those rocks. Can't blame her for not liking-_   
  
Walker interrupted again. "That wasn't a request, you know. He's going with you whether you like it or not." It was phrased as a threat, but he kept his tone carefully neutral.   
  
I looked back and forth between Prec and the bounty hunters. "Sorry, sis…" I muttered to her under my breath. Then back to Walker: "Fine, no reason to threaten us. He can come."   
  
Walker merely nodded and went to drive Hunter's cycle into the back of his truck. The other three of us started to walk away, but before we could make it back to the street proper I turned and shouted: "Hey, Walker! Where're you going to be, exactly?"   
  
He leaned out the side of the truck's cab and yelled back: "Bottom level, Brinkward." And then he revved the engine and drove off.   
  
_Great, that only leaves around a half-mile or so of town to search if we want to find him…_ I thought cynically to myself as I turned and led my two companions into the busy noontime streets of Brinktown. 

* * *

  
  
What was it about a city, I wondered, that seemed to bring out the very worst alongside the very best in everything and everyone? Well I suppose the answer was obvious, really: With so many people in such a small space everything _had_ to flow together. Brothels next to churches espousing any number of strange new faiths. Beggars at the footsteps of the wealthiest merchant houses…there was no rhyme nor reason to any of it. Everyone in Brinktown just kind of…lived. I shook my head and figured I was probably thinking about it the wrong way anyways, no one ever bothered with philosophy anymore.   
  
Making our way up to the middle levels wasn't tough. The city wasn't really that dangerous a place if you knew how to walk, how to talk, and who or where to avoid. I mostly did, having been through town only a few months ago. It was a simple matter to avoid the territory of the more violent gangs and find a path up the side of the mountain that backed Brinktown.   
  
Hunter, as it turned out, wasn't a major impediment. In fact, he wasn't much of anything at all. Half the time, I forgot he was there entirely. The man's ability to blend into any sort of crowd was uncanny. Maybe that was why Walker kept him around.   
  
Once we actually made it up to the middle levels our mission became considerably more difficult. People - heck, streets too, for that matter - could move around frequently in Brinktown. I was betting Faris, Faily, and Tamashii would still be in about the same place as before, and that wasn't a very good bet at all.   
  
So we started sweeping the level from one end to the other, asking questions, greasing palms, making threats, you know, the usual. It worked pretty well. Most people didn't know anything useful, but eventually we found this beggar who claimed to've seen a girl around matching Tam's description. That seemed promising, since she's Wutain and you don't see too many of them this far east.   
  
So we wandered around, slowly working our way in the direction he pointed us. Of course, all this time, I was the one doing most of the work. Prec was still awfully subdued, while Hunter simply followed us without comment, effectively invisible.   
  
About then, though, our luck seemed to fade. The day started getting old, so I took us back around hillward (that's opposite of Brinkward) towards the final destination I had in mind. It was where I'd stayed the last time I'd been through here. The proprietor was probably the only real good friend I had (other than the girls, of course) in the whole city.   
  
Fortunately, it was in the same place as before. An old building that almost backed up against the mountain itself. I stood outside the door for a moment, soaking it all in. The sun was starting to set and it'd be getting really busy soon. I turned to my none-too-useful companions.   
  
"Looks like we'll be spending the night here guys." I said. Turning to Hunter, I asked "You think Walker'll be able to find us up here? Or you want to go get him?" Truth be told, I really wanted Hunter out of the way for a while.   
  
He turned his head to the side, as if examining something I couldn't see. He was downright creepy when he did that. "No. I'll go find him." Whew, good.   
  
He disappeared into the milling crowds along the street. I turned around, giving the front of the place and the crude sign on it one last look-over before entering.   
  
RED'S INN. 

* * *

  
  
It was a pretty cozy place, definitely. A little fireplace with nothing in it; tables, chairs, booths, a bar, and a couple of sets of stairs at the back. This early, there weren't too many people around; it'd be awhile before the night crowd started filtering in.   
  
No sooner had we walked in than the big, round man behind the bar (that'd be Red) saw me and grinned widely. He waved to us, and naturally, I couldn't say no to the invitation.   
  
So we walked right on over, ignoring the usual looks that me and Prec's eyes got, and sat ourselves down on one end of the bar, comfortably far away from everyone else.   
  
"Sindai! You wily bastard! How in the hells are you?" Always a man given to volume, Red didn't waste much time turning it up now.   
  
"I'm fine, Red, I'm fine…just going to be back in town for a few days, need a place to stay."   
  
"Oh of course you do. No problem there; any room you want for you and…" He eyed Precious for a moment, thinking fast. Just as I was about to speak again, he snapped his fingers and proclaimed. "Ah! I got it! She's your sister, right? The one you talked about before."   
  
I nodded. "Yep. You've got a good memory, Red. Red, this is Precious; Prec, meet Red."   
  
"Hello." She said politely.   
  
He grinned even wider than was normal, then turned away to yell something at one of the servers. When he turned back, I continued, "You wouldn't happen to know anyone by the name of Tamashii, Faris, or Faily around here, would you?"   
  
He burst out laughing. "Holy, what a coincidence! As a matter of fact, I do, Sindai. One of them works for me!" He nodded back behind the bar, to the kitchen. "Right in there, getting dinner ready. Tamashii, I think the name is. Wutain girl."   
  
This time, I grinned with him. Nodding to Prec, I asked for her. "Can she go see her? We're old friends, and it's been-"   
  
"Sure she can. I got plenty of cooks. It's that door over there, by the stairs." I turned to tell Prec to go, but she was already way ahead of me. I was looking at air.   
  
"So, you want anything to drink?"   
  
"Yeah," I said. "Anything wet'll do, just don't get me drunk."   
  
He walked over to get something for me, but got sidetracked by someone else at the bar. I took the opportunity to scan all the new arrivals. Nothing interesting there, so I leaned against the wall near the stool and tried imagining what life was like before the Draining, just for a moment. It was tough, far too much had changed since then, and I knew too little about it. _Maybe I should ask Walker about it, later. He's old enough to remember._   
  
Red finally finished and came back over my way. I snatched the mug out of his hand and drank like a man dying of thirst. It was pretty good, about as good as you could get in this part of town. I told Red as much, then said. "Business must be getting better, if you can afford this."   
  
"Of course it has. With the Raptors out of here - thanks to you - I can actually put of the money this place takes in back into it. Helps a ton." He let out a great, gusty sigh. "Holy, I can remember that like it was yesterday; you running back and forth all across the level; me trying to keep them off your back…damn, things were fun back then."   
  
I chuckled a little condescendingly. "Yeah, great times; almost getting killed every five minutes…now you're making me feel old. All this talk about 'back then.'" I dug down into my pockets for gil, a little worriedly. "Say, just how much are you going to want for rooms for four people? And the drinks and food…"   
  
"For you? Nothing. I'd have gone out of business by now if it wasn't for you. And besides," his grinned even wider. "They say the best things in life are free."   
  
"Not according to the hookers down the street." I responded, reflexively.   
  
For a second I thought he was choking or something, then he pounded a fist down on the bar and burst out in guffaws so loud they drew looks from all across the room. Eventually he quieted down, and everyone else went back to their meals, drinks, and conversations.   
  
"Wow, I didn't think I was being _that_ clever…" I said, supremely pleased with myself.   
  
"Oh - heh - it's just been so long. I wasn't expecting - ha -"   
  
I drained my second (or third, or maybe fourth; I wasn't paying attention) drink and stood up. Time to get around to other stuff before I _did_ do and get myself drunk by accident… "Hey Red, you got decent baths in this place yet? I've been travelling a long time and I'm kinda-"   
  
"Whew, you sure as hell are." He waved his hand around in front of his nose, mock-fanning away my smell. "And I sure as hell do. No luxury is too great for Red's Inn any more!" He squinted at the front door as someone pushed it open and came in, gauging the time by the light left outside. "They've probably just finished heating the water. Go on back through that door near the other stairs; first door on the right."   
  
"Tell Prec where I went when she comes back, all right? Shouldn't take too long…"   
  
"Sure thing."

****

Chapter 6: _"That's an understatement..."_

  
  
  
Hoooooo-damn, did a hot bath ever feel _good_ after all those days out there. I took my sweet time, luxuriating in the relaxation provided by soothing, scalding liquids. It was in one of those old, white tubs they made back before the Draining, so I had plenty of room to stretch out.   
  
I ended up falling asleep, reawakening only when my mouth slid under and I choked while trying (unsuccessfully) to breath water. I scowled. I must've been out for a long time; the water had gone from piping-hot to tepid. So, groaning and mumbling all the way, I hauled myself out of the tub, dried off, and beat all the grit out of my clothes as best I could before dressing again.   
  
I walked down the hall and back into the main room of the inn. Red hadn't been exaggerating when he said business had gotten better; the place was filled to bursting. I caught plenty of looks my way when I came in, but none that lingered long enough to provoke suspicion, not that that meant much. After a moment I spotted Prec and Tam at a table near the bar, so, naturally, I beelined for them   
  
"Hey, Sindai!" She jumped up and gave me a hug, embarrassing me terribly. But, heh, that's Tamashii for you…   
  
"Uh…yeah, Tam, its been too long..." I managed to lever her off of me and take a seat. I noted they were eating dinner (some kind of soup, I probably didn't want to know exactly what was in it) and signaled one of the servers to bring me a bowl too.   
  
Prec, meanwhile, was busy trying to stifle her laughter at us two. "You guys…" She got out.   
  
"What? I'm not allowed to show a little joy at being reunited with my other two best friends on the whole continent?" Tam asked, grinning. I wondered what they'd been talking about before…   
  
My dinner came. "And speaking of your 'other two best friends,' how are they?" I asked. _Small talk first. Gotta figure out a subtle way to tell how much Prec has told her so far…_   
  
"Oh, Faris and Faily are fine. They're message runners for the more powerful merchants and bosses. It's sorta dangerous, but they're really good at it." She grinned evilly. "And it helps that everyone thinks there's only one of them." Oh, yeah, almost forgot to mention that before, Faris and Faily happened to be identical twins. I imagined that could come in real handy in a place like this, if used with finesse.   
  
I wondered how long they could keep up the deception if they were actively involved in such high-level stuff. They'd been here for months, and that was already longer than they'd ever managed it anywhere else. Of course, Brinktown was larger than anywhere else…   
  
"Where are they now?" I asked, curious.   
  
Tam shrugged. "I don't know, exactly. Maybe busy with work, maybe busy with their…uh…" She blushed. I grinned. I could tell what was coming. "…their…boyfriends."   
  
_Boyfriend_s_? Plural? Whoa, there must be an even more impressive juggling act going on here than I thought._ I looked at Prec and we shook our heads in unison. Those two could be just plain crazy at times.   
  
"So how've you guys been, Sindai? I've been asking Precious for half an hour, but she keeps changing the subject! What's going on?" _Well, I guess that answers that question…_   
  
"We…uh…well…I…" I looked to Prec again, desperate for help. She looked away from me. Damn it all to Meteor. Being the tough one sucks sometimes. I sighed and dug a big bunch of vegetables (or something) out of my soup with my spoon, shoveling it into my mouth to give me time to think. Tam was looking awfully worried now.   
  
_Nothing to do but tell her the truth, I guess._ So I did.   
  
I told her about what I'd done to Cabutler's compound before we skipped town ("You idiot!") About how we'd run out east, towards Thorn, but had been caught too early. ("Oh Holy!") How we'd been packed back to Kalm by the infamous Shadow Walker and Soul Hunter ("Really? What're they like?") What we found when we got there (_"Gone?! No!"_) And, lastly, us - or Hunter, rather - tracking the perpetrators here.   
  
By the time I was done, Prec's eyes were tearing up and Tam was staring in open-mouthed amazement. "I don't believe it…Kalm…Tifa…_gone?_"   
  
I looked away and shrugged. Of course they were gone; I'd seen it with my own eyes. It was sad, I knew. But I didn't grieve for everyone I'd known there.   
  
I wondered why…   
  
…And realized the Steel Rose was…tingling…in my coat pocket. That was strange…   
  
I guess Prec's distress struck some kind of motherly nerve in Tam. The Wutain girl sprang into motion, rubbing the tears out of my younger sister's eyes and whispering something to her. I sat back, uncomfortably looking at the remains of my meal. I didn't mean to hurt-   
  
Tam dragged Precious to her feet and started to hustle her off upstairs. As they passed, she leaned down and whispered to me reproachfully. "How can you be so cold about this?"   
  
_What? But I - it's just how -_   
  
I turned to answer, too late. They were already to the stairs.   
  
"I'm…sorry…" I whispered to her back. No one heard. 

* * *

  
  
Some time later, I still sat there, alone. A handful of people (women, mostly) approached me, but a harsh blood-red look was all it took to make them seek more…amiable… company.   
  
I sat. I drank. I glared. I brooded. What had I done wrong? I didn't know. Maybe Precious had just needed a female friend. Yeah, that was probably it. I began to feel better. There were some things-   
  
_-Wait. Who was that?_   
  
Some people had come through the door, while it swung closed behind them I thought I saw a familiar figure, just outside.   
  
_No…it couldn't be._   
  
Yet I found myself standing. I watched myself move over to the bar and tell Red to tell Tam I'd gone out for a walk. I might be a while.   
  
"Yeah." He gave me a knowing wink. "A 'walk.' Sure."   
  
I didn't bother to correct his assumption. Even a second's hesitation might be too much.   
  
Into the busy nighttime streets of Brinktown I plunged. _Damn it all!_ Things were too crowded. Frantic, I jumped a bit to get a better view. _There!_ I followed the familiar form through a dozen intersections and crossroads as best as I could. It was difficult. Brinktown didn't have much in the way of street lighting and I didn't remember this part of town too well.   
  
I turned down an alley to get ahead of my target. It didn't work. He'd turned the wrong way and I only ended up further behind him. _Stupid, stupid…_ We moved even further Brinkward. I wondered just where in the hells Cabutler could be heading.   
  
Again, I tried the alley trick. At this point it was my only hope of catching up. Unfortunately…this alley seemed already occupied. Oops.   
  
In an instant I was surrounded, all four of the paths leading away from the intersection blocked. What little light there was was dim and dirty, coming from the opposite end of the ally to my left. I could make out none of the faces around me, though I thought there was something familiar…   
  
_Raptors._   
  
"Uh-oh." 

* * *

  
  
Switchblade could not believe his luck. It was…incredible. Sindai, _right here._ Sindai, the man who'd broken the Raptors' power all those months ago. Sindai, the kid who'd taken his Holy-damned _hand!_   
  
He allowed his scarred face to crinkle into a sadistic smile. "That's an understatement, Sindai."   
  
If he was terrified out of his wits (as he should've been) he didn't show it. This annoyed his older enemy unreasonably. "Hi…uh…Switchblade…How's that hand doing?"   
  
"Oh…Ha. Ha." He waved the stump of his left wrist in the air. "You're a funny guy, Sindai. But I think the situation here is even funnier. Here I am, just waiting with some new friends for some idiot to stumble by, and instead of just 'some idiot,' I get you. Beautiful, the way fate works sometimes, ain't it?"   
  
"Yeah, yeah it is…" The kid turned full circle, doubtless looking for a way to run, before coming around to face Switch again. This was gonna be _good._ "So…were you planning to _talk_ me to death or something?"   
  
_Ha, what an idiot. He thinks I'm gonna talk with him so he can startle us…well…_ Switch shifted his eyes fractionally, giving the man behind Sindai the signal.   
  
_Sniiiiiik-whoooosh-thunk-_   
  
Sindai caught the signal and spun, as Switch had expected. The knife-man behind him really never stood a chance. Switchblade knew that. The kid produced that strange red sword out of thin air like he always did, gutting the man as he lunged forward to stab the air where Sindai's back had been.   
  
The knife-man dropped to the ground in two pieces; the red-steel sword had that effect on human flesh. _Ha! Now I've got the basta-_ Switch thought in triumph as he lunged forwards, a knife in his one remaining hand. Sindai was fast, but not that-   
  
_Skliiiiitch-_   
  
Somehow Sindai's neck wasn't where it should have been. _But - if that sound wasn't my knife hitting his spine, then- _  
  
Suddenly, Switchblade's legs didn't seem to want to obey his brain. As a matter of fact, his arms and neck and vocal chords didn't seem to want to do anything either. That was odd. He hit the ground hard, but he hardly noticed, only having time to think one last thought before darkness closed over him.   
  
_I guess he_ was _that fast after all…_   


* * *

  
  
I took a deep breath as my old enemy slumped to the ground at my feet, dead or dying.   
  
And everyone froze.   
  
All had started forwards when their leader had given the signal, but had not yet taken two full steps by the time both the knife-man and Switchblade lay at my feet.   
  
Damn, that'd been close.   
  
I took another breath and thought furiously. What I said now might decide whether I lived to return to Red's or not. I looked around at them all, still dark, vague shapes in the shadows of the alley, and forcing my voice to its lowest, grittiest, most menacing, I said: "Who dies next?"   
  
Ha. Oldest line in the book…but in this case, it still worked. Robbed of leadership, they scattered down all four alleyways.   
  
My heart started beating again, making my whole body shake as the adrenaline rush caught up with me. _By all the Ancients and Holy and Meteor, that was too close._ I felt a twinge of pain and put a fingertip to the side of my neck. _Holy!_ It came away bloody. If Switchblade's knife had been an inch further to the left…   
  
I shuddered and moved towards the end of the lighted alley. I may be alive, but there was no doubt that I'd lost Cabutler's trail. My one chance to end this thing quickly, gone. He could have been anywhere by then. What a waste of…   
  
…And about then, the Steel Rose began to shudder in my grip.   
  
"What the fuck?" I looked down, startled. I guessed I'd kept my concentration on it by accident, forgetting to allow it to return to its normal forum so I could put it away. Now it looked like it was having _convulsions_ or something. I'd never seen anything like it. Bands of red and gray rippled across its surface, patterns that changed from second to second.   
  
My grip tightened involuntarily on the Rose as I felt something tug at my mind. It was as if…as if a tiny ray of light was struggling to pierce the fog in my mind, to show me something…   
  
And then I had it. _That way._   
  
Without a second thought, I marched off in the direction the mental nudges pushed me. It was, perhaps, the stupidest thing I could have done. The smart thing to do would have been to go back to Red's, wait for Walker and Hunter, and get everyone together before coming back here.   
  
Yet those thoughts didn't even cross my mind. Maybe I had drunk more than I thought I had…   


* * *

  
  
I ghosted through the city as if in a dream. For no clear, rational reason, I was absolutely sure that I would soon find Cabutler. It was as if I'd had a map written on my brain. Every turn and twist, every street and alleyway, I knew. Or, more accurately, I knew every turn and twist and street and alley - along the path I felt I had to take.   
  
_There. That building._   
  
I was practically on the Brinkward edge of this level. This far out, the buildings were held up only by sloppily constructed supports added on to the old, pre-Draining main supports.   
  
I kept to the shadows, utterly silent, as I approached the building which I _knew_ was my goal. The rickety streets were practically deserted around here. It was a poor neighborhood, even by Brinktown's standards. A prime candidate for a collapse at any moment.   
  
_There. That window._ The Rose had stopped shuddering. Utterly certain of myself, I imaged it back into a flower and tucked it away.   
  
On one side of that building, at the very edge of the city, there was a window with radiance shining out about it. It was shuttered and boarded up, yet still some light and sound leaked around the edges. I padded down the alley, as cautious as I'd ever been in my entire life. At last, I got up under the window, and, ever so slowly, put my ear to one of the cracks in the boards to listen…   


* * *

  
  
"…at will be all, Cabutler. You are dismissed." A woman's voice.   
  
"Yes, mistress." Cabutler's voice. Footsteps. A door closing.   
  
"Mistress?" A different man. Harsh laughter. "I hope you don't get too used to this ass kissing."   
  
"And why not?"   
  
"Because-" He was interrupted by another man, though they sounded very much alike. "What is it with you-"   
  
The woman interrupted. "Stop doing that."   
  
"Doing what?" Yet another different man.   
  
"You know what I mean. Changing in mid-sentence like that. It's annoying and makes it impossible to hold a coherent conversation with you."   
  
"Interesting." The first man again, it seemed. "I never woulda thought your kind would get starved for conversation. You're always starved for something else certainly…But I guess it's impolite to speak with your dinner. That explains it, I think..."   
  
A much-abused sigh. "Would you stop it with the food jokes? I never-" She stopped.   
  
"What is it?"   
  
"I smell human. No, not you, or Cabut-" 

* * *

  
  
Instantly, I threw myself backwards, away from the window. This was _bad_. Bad-bad-bad-bad-   
  
I was too late.   
  
The boards exploded outwards as if hit with a sledgehammer. A dark-white blur flew out through it, landing right on my chest. In an instant my arms and legs were pinned and I was staring up into a face from Hell.   
  
She was one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen, with the kind of unnatural agelessness attributed to Ancients in the stories. Full lips, dark eyes, jet hair, pale skin. Only this was no Ancient.   
  
Her mouth opened, revealing half-inch, wickedly sharp canines, and she spoke with a voice of honeyed iron, staring right into my eyes.   
  
"Hello cutie. I'm Shigan. You're dead."


	2. Chapter 7

**** ****

Chapter 7: _"…if they really wanted to"_

  
  
  
And for a handful of instants things gelled that way. The blooder above me trying to decide whether to kill me right then or drag me within; the strange men inside only now reacting to what she had told him a second ago; and I myself just then realizing that I had the Rose in my right hand, and my right wrist was free to move…   
  
The slash had almost no force behind it, but was still enough of a shock that she leapt off of me to avoid it. The tiny corner of my mind that wasn't screaming at the rest of me to get the hell off of the ground congratulated myself on using the blooder's unnatural reflexes to my advantage.   
  
I flipped up to my feet in an instant, scanning the alleyway in both directions to make sure no one had yet come out to help kill me.   
  
The good news was, no one else had.   
  
The bad news was, the good news didn't matter.   
  
The blooder (what was the name? Shigan, right, sounded familiar-) was standing still as a statue, not five feet away. I was surprised to see that I had actually got her with that one weak slash. Just above her right eye there was a long, shallow gash that leaked a fluid only vaguely reddish - mostly translucent - in color. Even as I watched, pale skin knit back together and she was as good as new.   
  
_At least as good as a person who's technically dead can be. But then I guess that's pretty damn good in any blooder's case…_   
  
She felt above her eye with one hand, where the cut had been a second ago. "Hmm…" She purred softly in that wicked-smooth voice. "It's been a long time since anyone has managed to catch me by surprise." I thought she was about to say something else but she didn't, pausing to look at me expectantly instead.   
  
"Umm…" I replied. Captain Wit to the rescue, as always.   
  
She took a step forward. I kept the tip of the Rose aimed at her face, tracking every move. It didn't seem to bother her at all. _Screw defense, if there's one thing she won't be expecting-_   
  
I lunged forwards, my entire body uncoiling like a high-tension spring. The tip of the Rose moved through the air so fast that it whistled audibly. (Now there was something new. I'd never heard the Rose _whistle_ before. Must have had something to do with my bloodstream being sixty percent adrenaline by that point.)   
  
It was perhaps the fastest I had ever moved in my entire life. It didn't matter very much. Reflexes born of black magic will trump adrenaline any day of the week. She deflected the Rose by slapping the flat of the blade aside with her palm. Oh well, I had half expected that to happen. While she was thus distracted, I brought my fist up and into her gut.   
  
"That wasn't very nice." She said, utterly indifferent to a blow that would have reduced most people to a choking wreck.   
  
Before I could recover she seized my outstretched arms in grips like a pair of steel manacles and threw me into the wooden wall beside her. It was unbelievable; she couldn't possibly have been one-half my weight (and I'm not a big guy) yet I was being manhandled like a little kid.   
  
I grunted at the spine-bruising impact, but landed on my feet. I aimed to cut her arm off at the elbow where she was holding onto my wrist. Again, I wasn't fast enough. She pulled back and punched me in the chest so hard I could feel _shockwaves_ moving up and down my torso. Again my spine slammed into the wall. I thought I could feel the beginnings of a hole in it this time. (The wall, not my back, thankfully.)   
  
I brought the Rose around in front of me and she faded back as if made of smoke. Through the bruising-induced haze I did manage one useful thought: _She has no skill at all._ Sure, she was inhumanly fast and strong, but she had no real technique. My very next thought (not nearly as useful) was: _Not that that's going to help me when she punches my spine through this fucking wall…._   
  
_BANG!_   
  
Shigan blinked, then looked down. I looked down with her. I wondered which of us was more astonished to see the gaping entry wound of a bullet below her left arm. My money's on her.   
  
Still perfectly synchronized, we both looked up towards the end of the alleyway (the end that was near the front of the building, hillwards) where stood my two saviors. The Soul Hunter and the Shadow Walker.   
  
_BANG!_   
  
Walker pulled the trigger of his rifle again. This time his aim was off. He was going for her skull but missed cleanly. To her credit, the blooder realized she was in real danger now, and did the smartest thing possible. With a heave and a twist, I was sent sailing along through the air, elegant as a sack of bricks, directly towards my two rescuers.   
  
Good thing she wasn't quite strong enough to get me all the way there. I might have broken an arm or something really serious. As it was, I merely landed with quite a few new bruises.   
  
I groaned and dragged myself to a sitting position, thinking of how nice it would be if I could get some kind of a special dispensation on the effects of gravity. No more falling for me then…   
  
"Sindai, catch!" Walker yelled. I just barely snagged the waterskin out of the air in time. With elation, I realized it was more of that watered-down healing potion the two bounty hunters carried around with them. Damn, was I ever glad to see it.   
  
Refreshed and rejuvenated, I got up just in time to duck down again as I realized there was still a very pissed off blooder behind me.   
  
_BANG!_   
  
I didn't see if Walker hit or missed that time, or what Shigan had been busy doing while I was rejoining the ranks of the healthy. I was too busy watching a shadowy figure come out from around the front of the building and kick Hunter's ass. Walker caught it out of the corner of his eye and turned to shoot - but not fast enough. The figure snatched the gun out of Walker's hands and smashed him in the side of the head with the stock.   
  
Then it produced something from its clothes, something that hissed like the Rose as it grew a long, razor-sharp blade, and cut the rifle in half.   
  
Little white mice with icy-cold feet ran up and down my spine.   
  
The figure turned to regard me, and, at exactly that moment, a particularly large chunk of Meteor lit the sky as bright as day directly overhead. I saw raggedy clothes, a sword that could have been the Rose's twin, and eyes which held equal parts mirth, maliciousness, and madness. The light faded, and he became a shadow once more.   
  
"Shigan!" He called out. Then his voice seemed to change pitch, strangely, as he continued. "Deal with those two, will ya?" There was a change again. "This one has something I want."   
  
The blooder bitch made no reply. As she slipped by me, I saw why. That bullet of Walker's that had hit her had punctured both lungs, causing them to fill with that strange, transparent fluid. Doubtless she'd be fine in the long run, but for a while she wasn't going to be saying much to anyone.   
  
And I was left alone again, facing a living legend. My eyes readjusted to the dim moonlight and I could see more clearly. The man continued walking closer, slowly, measuredly, as the executioner walks.   
  
My vision became sharp enough to pierce the shadows around my approaching adversary at last. I locked gazes with him, then realized I'd made a very big mistake…   
  
_Pits of nothing. Gaps in the face…_ Those were his eyes. They could not be described as "black" because…black is a color.   
  
Until that instant I had thought the expression "eyes that look through you" could not possibly be literal.   
  
And I fell…   
  
All at once, the full force of the situation swept over me. Fear, debilitating, creeping terror threatened to pull me under and drown me within the tales I had heard of the Five's terrible tyrannies across the Western Continent. Roughly, I pulled my mind up through the torrent. _Focus! Those are exaggerations, rumors! This is real and now!_ There had to be a way, had to be a way to keep me from killing myself and only knowing it when he ran me through on his own malleable blade…   
  
"You're…the Many?" I choked out. Yes, yes that was it. _He is human. He will answer._ Then he wouldn't be a phantasm, a bogeyman, any longer. Yes, yes…   
  
He grinned slightly, rattling me (impossibly) still further. "Personally I prefer the name 'Rifts,' but I believe I'm known by that which you have just spoken by far more people." I blinked. What in the Planet? His words didn't fit with the Eyes.   
  
I blinked again, looked again. The Eyes were gone completely. In their places sat normal eyes, eyes of blue. He continued. "It's a sort of a description as well, you see? Like 'the Many'? The Rifts are in my mind, the name is in the air." He smiled again, evidently quite pleased with himself. I was beyond thinking at that point.   
  
His eyes changed again. Reptile green, now. His voice became rougher, more businesslike, less dreamy. "You have something I want." He stated flatly. I knew that already. "The sword. Give it to me, and-" He was cut off in mid sentence by…_himself?_ I shuddered at these new eyes. They were white as…white as…nothing I could imagine. The polar opposite of the Eyes. Not as disconcerting, though they looked through me in that same way.   
  
"Mmm…" The Many made a thinking noise to himself. "What is its name?" He nodded downwards, looking to where my right hand hung limp by my side, my weapon grasped, nearly forgotten, in its fingers.   
  
"The Steel Rose." I answered before I could think. He reminded me of Hunter now, with that way of staring at nothing with absolute intensity.   
  
"Ah…Steel Rose, meet the Iron Lily." He held up his own weapon, a mirror image of my own. No, wait, there were differences…the Rose was tinted red, while the Lily was blue…perhaps because they were modeled after different flowers? Yeah, that made sense. All of a sudden, his eyes went red as blood. Red as mine. "Now it's time for the killing part."   
  
Still drained from my moments within the Eyes, I was caught totally unprepared. The razor tip of the Lily came at my chest. It was a killing thrust, one that I couldn't possibly avoid. Still, I brought the Rose up, just barely tapping the midsection of the Lily with the tip before it penetrated my chest, skewering my heart and-   
  
No, wait.   
  
_CRACK-BOOM!_   
  
There was thunder without lightning.   
  
Only twenty years of conditioning in the harshest age the Planet had ever known kept me from being blown head over heels by the sheer _sound._ As it was, I was driven a good ten feet backwards, digging furrows in the trash that made up the alleyway floor. The sound faded. I brought my arms down from where instinct had placed them to shield my head and looked at the Many.   
  
He was muttering to himself. Looking down at the sword in his hand, then at me, then back. The mutters changed tone constantly, as if it was not a single person but an entire crowd muttering among themselves. (then again, from a certain point of view, it was.) His eyes shifted color so rapidly I could barely pick out individual shades.   
  
But my mind was working again. Something in that sound (whatever the hell it had been) was more clarifying and reinvigorating than any amount of watered-down potion. I was capable of acting for myself now, thinking my own thoughts. And my thoughts were screaming: _Kill that multi-eyed bastard and get the hell out of here!_ Well, it seemed to make sense at the time.   
  
So I made my move, snatching a knife from my coat and hurling it at his face as I ran forwards. It didn't even startle him. Smooth as ice he reached up with the flat of the Lily and knocked the projectile away. I threw another, same result. Then a third, same again. And then I was on him and it was a pure sword duel, one of the most uneven I'd ever been engaged in. I had no edges over him; he was faster, stronger, and far more skilled. The multifaceted character of his eyes extended into his fighting style, causing radical shifts in technique and tactics - even in mid-move. It was only this unpredictable self-contradiction that saved me from a very rapid death. As soon as he gained an advantage, his personality shifted and he moved in a totally different direction. It was a dead stalemate.   
  
Seconds stretched into minutes. Had I the time to spare, I would have been shocked. I was _matching_ one of the Five! But then, matching wasn't good enough. Sooner or later he wasn't going to cut himself off when he gained an advantage, and then I would lose.   
  
Then, more sudden than any other shift, Rifts' eyes went polar-white and he shoved me away so hard the breath was knocked out of me when I hit the wall. He clutched at his head with his hands, obviously in unbelievable pain. His mouth opened, but no sounds came out. I was still gasping on the ground, trying to get my breath back so I could finish him before whatever-the-hell-was-happening wore off.   
  
Just as I began to recover, his writhing stopped. The Eyes were back.   
  
With them, the Many seemed to regain control over himself…but not entirely. His knuckles were white on the hilt of the Lily and every vein and muscle stood out rigidly against his skin.   
  
Slowly, deliberately, he turned away from me and towards the entrance to the alley…where stood Hunter. Their eyes locked, both were as still as statues. Featureless pits against expressionless orbs. I did my level best to become a part of the alley's wall.   
  
It didn't help. Something as massive as mountain pressed against my mind, crushing, constricting, strangling. I took the only escape route still available.   
  
I blacked out.   


* * *

  
  
For the second time that evening I was woken up while trying to mimic a fish and breath water. For the second time that evening I was unsuccessful. I hacked, I coughed, I spluttered. When at last I regained full awareness I saw that the source of the rather unsubtle liquid awakening had been Walker.   
  
I had been lying down, now I bolted upright, scanning my surroundings. We were still in that same alleyway, only now there was a complete lack (I was happy to note) of beautiful vampire she-devils and psychotic schizophrenic swordsmen. Hunter leaned against the wall at the mouth of the alley, presumably on lookout duty.   
  
"What the hell happened?" I asked my reviver. "How long was I out?"   
  
He shook his head, looking very beat up and tired. "I was about to ask you the same thing. Hunter won't say a word about it and I didn't get here until the Many was gone."   
  
I frowned, then remembered something and looked down. Yes, the Rose was still grasped in my hand. But…what? It was still a sword. That was strange, it shouldn't have held a weapon's shape if I was unconscious… "I don't remember that well. My head…feels like someone took a sledgehammer to my mind."   
  
"I was afraid of that." Walker glanced at Hunter, then back to me. "What in Holy's name were you doing out here anyways?"   
  
"Oh…yeah." I dragged my feet back underneath myself and got up shakily, supporting myself on the wall. "That's…kind of a weird story…"   
  
"Try me."   
  
"If you say so…" It took me another moment to piece everything back together. My memory was coming back, but slowly. As quickly and concisely as I could - which wasn't very - I related everything that'd happened from the moment Hunter had left us at Red's to when I'd blacked out. He didn't react visibly to any of it.   
  
When I'd finished, he entered the house where I'd listened in on the pair talking, where Cabutler had last gone. A few seconds later he returned. "The Eastern Continent doesn't have anything more to fear from the Don of Kalm." He reported grimly. "He's in there all right, minus a good chunk of his throat and most of his blood."   
  
I suppose I should have reacted to that, but I was still preoccupied, still remembering, trying to figure out… _Wait a minute._ "Walker, I want you to answer a question, and I swear to Holy I'm not taking 'Go ask him.' as an answer this time. What is it, _exactly,_ that Hunter…" I searched for the right words, unsuccessfully. "Does?"   
  
"Oh." He said blandly. "He's deaf."   
  
"Huh?" I blinked, the incongruity of the statement stopping me cold. "But he's not-"   
  
"Yes, he is." Said the bounty hunter firmly. "He was born without the ability to hear, at least in the way we think of it. Instead he…there was a word for it, back before the Draining…he's an empath."   
  
I recognized the word, but only vaguely. "You can't possibly be serious. You mean empathy as in…mind-reading?"   
  
"Yes. What's so hard to believe about that? You've already experienced it directly, I think. The Many has his own brand of it; those 'Eyes' you kept muttering about while you were out."   
  
I gaped. It had to be true, of course, everything fit, but… "But the Many used to be in SOLDIER, so he was injected with Mako All of the Five were. That's why the Draining twisted them so badly." I gestured at Hunter. "He's even younger than I am, he couldn't possibly have been in SOLDIER."   
  
Walker shrugged. "You think I haven't asked him that? I have, and it was useless. He's never talked about his past to anyone. Ever."   
  
Somehow I wasn't surprised. "So was he the one who drove those two off?"   
  
He laughed caustically. "No. No one 'drove them off.' Hells, either could have killed all three of us without much inconvenience if they really wanted to. We're only alive because they want us alive."   
  
"Why?"   
  
The older man kept laughing that cynical laugh. "If I knew the answer to that one, kid, I wouldn't have bothered waking you up." I bristled at that. He relented slightly. "I can only guess it has something to do with that sword of yours, and this 'thunder' you say you heard-"   
  
_Huh?_ "What do you mean 'I say I heard'? It was so damned loud it _threw_ both of us backwards. You couldn't possibly have not heard it."   
  
"No, I didn't hear a thing."   
  
My thoughts repeated themselves. _Huh?_   


* * *

  
  
A level down and a hundred yards over, a certain pair slipped through the shadows of Brinktown, moving invisibly towards…somewhere else.   
  
The man (or men, depending on how you look at it) who called himself Rifts broke the silence which had reigned for several minutes. "Did you tell that fool bounty hunter what I told you to?"   
  
The woman, Shigan, looked at him. She tried to speak, but only choked on fluid. That damned bounty hunter and his damned gun…she spit out as much of it as she could, soon regaining the power of speech. "Of course…I did…" She said haltingly. Perhaps her lungs hadn't entirely healed yet after all.   
  
She considered the color of the Many's eyes…green…good. Green was the sly one, the thinker, always businesslike, probably the sanest of the whole bunch, and the one that Shigan found most pleasant to talk to overall. "Why do you want them to follow us?"   
  
The Green was annoyed with her. "You don't need to know that, yet. I-" This time he was not interrupted by himself but instead by a new addition to their group.   
  
A dark-haired man who seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be absolutely normal stepped out of the shadows beside them. "It's done."   
  
Not at all startled, Rifts nodded and said. "Good." Abruptly his eyes went yellow and he chuckled to himself. "The idiot, I wonder what he ever thought he could gain by working for-" The Green reasserted control with equal abruptness. "We must leave now, before the entire city is alerted to our presence."   
  
Shigan complained. "We can't leave now! I haven't eaten in ages." She gestured at her pale skin, then at the unnamed man's more normal complexion. "He's already gorged himself. I'm not going to last long unless I can feed before we go, too."   
  
The Green studied them both a moment, considering. "You have one hour, then I'm leaving with or without you. We have an army to catch up to."   
  
The blooder nodded. "Great. Come on, Kyo. We have some hunting to do."   



End file.
